1-800-Flowers and Their Twitter Customer Service

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, the day that men are forced into buying flowers for their loved ones for fear of persecution. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy buying flowers because I know how much my fiancée enjoys them. What I don’t enjoy, is the expensive delivery fee and service charges that are implemented on Valentine’s Day. I ordered flowers from 1-800-Flowers and paid a service fee to make sure they arrived on-time. Long story short, I was very disappointed with what was received. Unlike some, I did receive my order on time, but what was received was very disappointing.

I write this article not because I am overly upset with 1-800-flowers, I write it to show you that you can use Twitter for customer service. With the evolution of social media, companies are forced to field customer service inquires via social media. I haven’t received a resolution yet, but it sure beats waiting on the phone for hours. I wasn’t the only one upset as Janet had a busy night. My original tweet was retweeted 6 times by other upset customers. Also, 1-800-flowers wasn’t the only flower company having problems.

@yearofthedude we apologize for your experience. Please DM your order number and contact info so we can assist.

1-800-flowers asked everyone who complained to follow them so they could send a Direct Message with their order number. In October of 2013, Twitter added a setting that if you enable it, anyone can Direct Message you, whether they follow you or not. Either 1-800-flowers doesn’t know this, or they are trying to building a following with their angry customers.

Next year, I am going to call the local florist instead of using one of these services. Do you have a Twitter customer service story to share? Let me know in the comments. If you haven’t signed up for Twitter yet, using it for customer service should put you over the edge to sign up.